


We Just Can't Stay Apart

by BitterChocolateStars



Series: Linked [3]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Ace!Newton, Bipolar Disorder, Bipolar Newton Geiszler, Car Accidents, Feels, Hive Mind, Nightmares, Vanessa is understanding, mentions of self harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-05
Updated: 2013-09-07
Packaged: 2017-12-25 18:02:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/956076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BitterChocolateStars/pseuds/BitterChocolateStars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They tried to go their separate ways, really they did.</p><p>The pull keeps getting worse, even Vanessa is feeling the strain.</p><p>Until finally it comes to a head and measures need to be taken.</p><p> </p><p>"Bring him home." She whispers in his ear.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The first sign

They tried to go their separate ways, really they did.

Newton returned to his work with research in artificial tissue replication, and working part time with the Worldwide Health and Disease Center that had sprung up a few years back to combat illness born from the decaying Kaiju bodies.

Hermann had forgone finding work to spend the last remaining months of his wife’s pregnancy with her in their home in berlin.

The first sign that something was wrong was four months after leaving the Shatterdome. After starting work Newton’s pills stopped working and his bipolar disorder reared its ugly head so hard he had to take time off work or risk stabbing his new lab partner in the leg after an afternoon arguing about DNA sequencing.

He felt it like a volcano about to erupt. Anger, hot and painful, bubbling just below the suface.

He needed out.

He slammed out of his lab and out of the building with no word to anyone where he was going (he would call later to apologize).

Thousands of miles away Hermann Gottlieb paused; midsentence, when the feeling of overwhelming anger flooded the spot in his mind reserved for his exuberant friend when he wasn’t near him (and that, his mind liked to scream, was wrong).

“Hermann?” Vanessa looked at him with a mix of worry and silent knowing.

“The fool- Newton, is mad about something.” He explains, rubbing at his temple in frustration. He would have to call him and ask about his medicine no matter how much the other man hates that.

“Are you taking your pill’s Newton?” Hermann asks later that night; after Vanessa has gone to bed.

“Yes _Mother_!” Newton snaps then cringes at himself over the video feed on Hermann’s computer. “Sorry Herm, not getting much sleep lately.” He admits.

“I too have been getting very little sleep lately Newton, it's just a side effect i'm sure it will pass in time.” Hermann tells him and that’s the end of it, they don’t want to talk about it anymore than they have to. The memories they share are still too fresh.

They talk about little things that have been going on in their lives. Hermann’s baby, Newton’s failed dating life being so busy all the time.

That night Newton dreams for the first time in weeks.

_“I have been working for twenty-seven straight hours and I have had little in the way of food or water, I have an angry craving for some good tea; which is unfortunate considering I can’t find any in this blasted place and to top it all off I have to deal with you two behind me all day giggling and flirting with each other. Now would you both shut up!?” He’s yelling at two startled techs bringing his cane down atop the desk (he doesn’t remember screaming this, or; for that matter, having a cane). He’s silently gleeful when their mouths shut simultaneously with audible clicks. Sweet sweet silence._

_He’s four more hours in when bickering starts up behind him. Getting louder and louder until they are shouting at each other in Swedish._

_“For.The.Love.Of.God!” He yell’s spinning around. He grabs the first thing to his immediate right (a small chalk board) and hurls it with all his might towards the two bickering science techs. It whiz’s between their face’s so fast that they are momentarily speechless as it smashes apart on the wall next to them._

_“Get.Out!” He snarls. The two women stare at him in shock before sharing a look and sprinting towards the doors faster than they had fifteen hours before when he had kicked them out the first time._

_He feels strangely calm after that._


	2. Nightmares

The second time they get any clue something is wrong it’s only been a month since the last incident.

Hermann is walking into the kitchen for tea, he’s not using his cane (he was feeling good this morning), when his leg gives out and he smacks his head on the wall as he falls, and there’s a jolt of panic in the back of his mind that isn’t his and his nose begins to bleed.

“Hermann are you alright?!” Vanessa calls as she rushes into the kitchen.

“Yeah, should have brought my cane.” He grumbles as she helps him to his feet. He hates when it happens, he’ll be feeling so great; strong enough to go without it, and then the muscles will just give out.

 “He’s going to call.” She says as she helps him into a table chair.

“Who?” He asks like he honestly doesn’t know. She just raises one elegant eyebrow at him before going over to the stove to start water for tea.

He tries to ignore her smirk as his phone goes off.

Newton is sitting in his living room, splayed out on the couch; trying anything to at least get some kind of sleep through the constant pull he feels on his mind; that started a week ago, that’s keeping him up at night. When his leg jerks violently and his head aches like he’s smacked it against something solid.

He flops onto the floor flailing; snapped out of his dozing state in a panic.

He feels his nose start to drip and tastes copper.

Knowing immediately that it’s not his pain he proceeds to grab his phone and dial Hermann’s number.

“Newton.” The mathematician answers almost immediately.  He’s now holding the icepack that Vanessa hands him to his head and a tissue is stuffed up his nose.

“Are you alright?” He asks a little embarrassed to hear the panic that makes his voice wobble.

“Yes, I just had a slight accident, how did you-”

“Dude seriously, don’t even try to finish that question.” He sighs and hears Hermann do the same. “It’s getting worse isn’t it?” He asks curling up into himself on the floor.

“I believe so.”

“Do you uh… do you feel like something is trying to pull your brain out of your skull?” He feels kind of silly for asking as soon as it comes out of his mouth.

“I assume you’re having the same problem with sleep then?” Hermann inquires.

“If by that you mean ‘not getting any at all to the point where I almost blew up my lab the other day’ then yup, no sleep.”

“And the nosebleed- wait did you say you almost blew yourself up?!” Hermann screeches. Vanessa startles from where she is making tea at the stove and glares at her husband and the phone.

“Yeah I have a nosebleed. It’s no big deal, no one was hurt and Johnson caught it before the acidic spleen… or I think it was a spleen, could blow.”

“Acidic spleen? What in god’s name are you working on?!” Hermann demands. The feeling of confusion and a vague yet definitely Newtonesque   feeling of ‘Oh-maybe-I-should-’ bubbles up in the Newton-space that is in Hermann’s mind.

For a moment there is a startled pause before Newton is admitting “I don’t actually remember, I think I still have the file they gave me though… I uh… I guess I should look into it huh?”

“Newton lad, are you alright? I know you tend to be all over the place when you work but this is strange even for you.” Hermann questions, the concern in his voice makes Newt blush and for a moment he’s glad Hermann can’t see his face.

“Yeah man I’m cool. Just… like I said, no sleep. It should go away with a few days good rest.”

He’s been doing so well when it comes to sleep (well when he manages to fall asleep), hasn’t had a nightmare in almost a month.

 Until tonight.

 

_It’s overcast and pouring rain outside as he walks through the street. The thunder overhead is loud and masks the sounds of the crowded streets. He is cold and soaked to the bone, it’s making him irritable._

_He should have known better than to go out today without an umbrella but he had been late to class and in a rush, he’d forgotten._

_Impatiently waiting for the light at the crosswalk to change the man behind him is muttering angrily about the rain and the crowed of people behind him, next to him a woman and her child are huddled under a bright pink umbrella._

_He knows better than to stand so close to the curb but the crowd keeps getting larger and nudging each other towards the street. Another clap of thunder startles the small child next to him and she drops her toy fairy. It skids across the wet pavement and into the street._

_“Petunia!” The girl cries and rushes after it._

_“MARY!” The mother screeches and starts after her child. There’s a car speeding down the street and it can’t see the child with the heavy rain beating against the windshield._

_Numbers flash before his eyes telling him that the woman isn’t going to make it in time, but he might._

_He sprints foreword into the street propelling the girl out of the way. His numbers don’t lie; he’s not going to get out of the way. He can’t bring himself to care at the moment because anything is better than watching a little girl die._

_There’s the screech of tires sliding on pavement. That’s the last thing he hears before._

_Pain, agonizing pain, rips through his hip._

_He can’t feel anything under him (almost like he’s floating)._

_Until he does, he slams down on to the pavement._

_He hears himself howl in agony, and thankfully darkness overcomes his mind and numbs his body._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This part was hard to write, when I was younger (Me around 11 my brother 8) my little brother was hit by a car while walking across the street to the ice cream truck and it was a terrifying thing to see, I screamed so loud that the entire block came out to see what happened, when I ran to him he had crawled to the curb and was just sitting there and looked at me with dazed expression and asked “What’s wrong, what happened?” because I was crying so hard, it kinda messed him up for a while and he hated everything for a long time, he’s better now and hates the world like any other 16yr old boy, but after it happened I got really bad anxiety every time I took my younger siblings anywhere, I held their hands until we made it from point A to point B, even if it embarrassed them to have their older sister holding their hand.
> 
> (Srry for that, moral of the story: the accident part was really hard to write)


	3. Bring Him Home

**_3:00am_ **

_The pain in his head won’t go away, it hurts, it hurts so much, why won’t it stop, he’s tried everything he can think of to make the pain lessen, pills, more pills, meditation, hell he even tried praying. The pulling is driving him crazy, it’s like part of himself has been ripped out and replaced with a raw wound. The nightmares aren’t going away, they’re getting worse. He feels so alone, horribly, achingly alone._

_He just wants it to stop; he doesn’t want to feel like this anymore._

**3:12am**

Hermann wakes to searing pain in both wrists. His cry of confused pain wakes Vanessa.

“Love?”

Hermann is sitting up gasping for breath. He doesn’t understand what’s happened, why his wrists hurt. He reaches out to in his mind to feel for Newton but he realizes that he’s not there.

Gone.

Newton is gone.

Nothing left but a numb nagging ache.

 It’s like a punch to the gut.

“Hermann what’s wrong?” Vanessa’s scared voice breaks through his panic. She’s wide eyes and scared, a hand rests on her protruding belly. He realizes he’s started to hyperventilate.

“I- I can’t feel him.” He stutters out, running shaky hands through sweaty hair.

“Isn’t that a good thing?” She asks; rubbing his back.

“This feels… wrong.” He admits shaking his head.

“Call him.” She suggests.

He tries.

And tries.

“He’s not answering.” He growls, frustrated, after his sixth try.

**3:35am**

***Ring***

***Ring***

***Rin-***

“Hello?” Vanessa answers with a yawn “No this is his wife…Yes… Wh- He did what!?” her shrill cry startling Hermann out of his thoughts. “No, yes he’s on his way; keep him there until he arrives!”

“Vanessa?!” Hermann grabs her hand before she can throw the phone across the room.

“That idiot! That FUCKING IDIOT!” She seethes, chest heaving and tears in her eyes, but her hand lowers to grip his shoulder.

“What happened?”

“They found Newton in his apartment covered blood... It looked like he tried to commit suicide.” She tells him in a hushed tone, brimming with emotion.

Hermann feels sick. Stumbling out of bed he grabs his cane and starts pulling clothes from his closet.

In his daze his doesn’t notice Vanessa move from the bed until she comes up behind him and wraps him in a tight hug, her stomach pressing into his back. Warm and reassuring.

“Bring him home.” She whispers in his ear.

* * *

 

Hermann contemplates what he’s going to say as he walks through the door to Newton’s hospital room. It seemed as though the pulling their heads had increased; running them both into exhaustion and hazy brooding frames of mind.

More so for Newton it seemed; who had a job and had to be up and running all the time, and had no one to help talk him down at three in the morning when he wakes up screaming because all he could see when he slept was Kaiju blue and pain and memories that weren’t his.

He stands silently in the doorway just watching his hyperactive friend fidget and fiddle with the bandages round his wrists while he sit’s trapped on his hospital bed. He’s angry; so very angry, at Newton for doing something so foolish and destructive. Another part of him (forced to the back of his mind to be dealt with later) is screaming out in pain and confusion.

“Hey, what are you doing here?” Newton asks nervously (and flinches; not violently, but enough to show he’s regretful, Hermann notes) from his bed when he spots Hermann standing in the doorway.

“Why?” Hermann hisses through clenched teeth, trying to hold back the angry yelling he feels bubbling up in his throat.

“Why what?”

“They found you in your apartment, covered in your own blood, why didn’t you call me before it got that bad?!”  He bellows. Newton flinches and curls tighter into himself. Hermann takes a deep breath trying to calm himself. Yelling will do no good.

“I’m sorry for yelling, but you understand why I am angry don’t you?”

For a moment Newton is confused, but he understands and he quickly faces away from Hermann’s angry glaring to stare out the window. Not before Hermann see’s the broken expression on the man’s face.

“How did you find out?” Newt fires back at him. There’s no heat in his question, just numb awareness that he made a bad decision.

“You still have me down as your emergency contact.” Hermann sighs as he moves to sit down in the chair next to the bed (He carefully doesn’t mention the extreme pain he had felt in his wrists, nor the numbness in the back of him mind that had him panicking to the point that it had Vanessa panicking).

 It had been Hermann’s suggestion when after four years of working together he walked into their lab shocked to find it empty, then later shocked to find his lab mate seated in the infirmary, and no one knowing but him because _‘I don’t want to worry my mom, she worries enough.’._ So he had suggested putting himself down as Newton’s emergency contact seeing as they would be working together for the foreseeable future… he had been right to do so it seemed.

“Oh… right.” The other man says dully.

“You’re going to stay with Vanessa and I until you feel better…steady.” He says softer, looking anywhere but at the glaringly white bandages around Newt’s brightly colored wrists.

“Wha- Man, no. You’re going to have a baby soon and-”

“And nothing, it was her idea, and I agree with it…” he stops and then points out something he himself just now noticed. “Can’t you feel it?” he asks.

“Feel what?” Newt asks confused.

“My point exactly.  I should feel the pull.” Hermann says tapping his temple. “I don’t, meaning that the closer we are the less strain on our minds.”

“Dude, seriously. No. I really don’t want to impose-”

“You’re coming whether you want to or not, or would you rather I call Vanessa?” Hermann cuts him off.

“I-… okay… alright I’ll go.” Newton huffs out, sounding more exhausted than he had in the ten years they’ve known each other.

“Good, we’re leaving in a few hours.”

A memory floats to the front of his mind; long ago lived and long ago fretted over, while they sat together in silence waiting for the doctor to come back and release Newt into his custody.

_“Geiszler, I have something for you to test out on your Kaiju guts-…Dr. Geiszler?” He called out, his voice echoing in the empty lab. He was surprised to find the place empty, from experience Newton had always gotten up long before he did and that was only if the man had gone to bed the night before. There had been days when he’d had to lock the other man out of the lab entirely so he would get a few hours of sleep._

_He shrugs, figuring it would just be best to wait until the man makes his way back to the lab._

_It isn’t until hours later; when he turns around suddenly realizing he hasn’t been assaulted by loud music or the man himself and sees the still empty side of the lab that he realizes that maybe Newton isn’t coming in that day, and in that case he has to take the papers to the man’s room himself._

_“Tedious.” He grumbles snatching up the file and marching out the door. After ten minutes of pounding on the man’s door he starts to get worried. “They had better not sent him off again without telling me.” He growls. It’s happened before, and it had taken two days before Hermann had realized it, it had set his work back a few hours but it was nothing more than an inconvenience. It was just rude though, that the man hadn’t come to say goodbye._

_He turns to make his way back to the lab; muttering about rude Kaiju groupies, when a technician pops up beside him looking flustered and nervous._

_“Yes?” He snaps._

_“The doctors, the sent me down here to find you, sir… could you uh… could you go help calm him down?” The young girl says shuffling from foot to foot._

_“Who?” He asks confused._

_“The crazy-” She stops herself when she sees the look on his face before beginning again. “Dr.Geiszler.”_

_An eyebrow raise has her spitting out the story. She talks as they make their way through the freezing Russian Shatterdome halls. Because in times like this you don’t have_ _time to stand and talk, you always have to be moving._

_“He was found in his lab this morning curled up under his desk, practically comatose, by the Russian Jaeger pilot’s sir. They carried him to the infirmary; he was fine until a few hours ago when he just started to freak out.” That’s all she’s willing to say until they walk through the doors to the med bay._

_“Oh thank god.” One of the doctors (grey eyes and even grayer hair) heaves a huge sigh of relief, as though Hermann has just taken the world from Atlas’ shoulders. The doctor rushes over and hovers around him nervously._

_“We don’t know what to do, we’ve tried everything but we can’t find his records and he stopped cooperating with us an hour ago when we asked if he was supposed to be taking anything, we knew you two have been working together for a few years now so you must be able to get something;_ anything _, out of him.” He tells Hermann quickly, before ushering him through the door to Newton’s room like a sacrifice being thrown to the wolves._

_“All you have to do is get him to tell you what he’s supposed to be taking.” The doctor whispers in his ear before leaving Hermann alone in the room with a livid looking biologist._

_“Why are you here?” Newt growls angrily._

_“Why don’t you tell me!” Hermann snaps back, walking over to sit in the uncomfortable looking chair near the bad. Newton looks confused._

_“They want you to ask about my meds?” He ventures._

_“Apparently.”  He concedes, sitting back and resting his cane against the side of Newton’s bed. Newt takes to looking dejectedly out the window. After a few moment of silence Newt cracks._

_“Are you going to ask?”_

_“No.” Hermann dismisses._

_“Why?” Newt grills._

_“Because it’s none of my business.” ‘ Though I am curious as to why you were comatose under your desk.’ He wants to add but refrains. The look on Geiszler’s face is shock, and maybe even a little relieved._

_“Oh… alright…” He mutters. It’s quiet; Hermann knows that any moment the quiet will be shattered by Newton being unable to turn on his brain to mouth filter._

_And right on time “You think they’ll let me leave soon, because I want to go back to the lab… or you know, my room.” He amends seeing Hermann’s look of disapproval “I mean this place isn’t very appealing and I’ve been stuck here since… uh… what time is it?”_

_“Three.” Hermann answers._

_“In the morning?”_

_“Afternoon…What day do you remember it being?” He asks calmly._

_“Saturday.”  Newton replies hesitantly. Hermann’s eye’s snap to the man’s face._

_Hermann stares at him… and stares hard… with a look of absolute shock and okay maybe he’s being a tad uncouth but “It’s Tuesday.”_

_“_ Really _?” His voice comes out strangled. His eyes are wide and he’s pale and shaking. Hermann thinks he can see him start to hyperventilate, wonders if Newton suffers from panic attacks, and that kind of explains things._

_“Fuck.” Newton mutters closing his eyes and clutching at his hair; gently but in a way that could at any moment become ungentle. “Not again…”_

_“Not again?” He doesn’t mean to say it out loud, but it slips out in his shock. Newton’s head snaps up and he stares at him in horror._

_“I uh… I…” He flounders before the dam finally breaks and he spills. “I’m supposed to be on anti-depressants… and anxiety meds… and I have special pills for my attacks… I’m bipolar and I have adhd (you probably guessed that) but I hate talking my meds for that so I don’t because they turn me into a zombie and I keep forgetting to take my anxiety medication but I forget because, dude I’m cutting up aliens all day who has time for that shit, I just want out of this room, I’m fine now, really I am, I don’t-”_

_“Newton!” Hermann shouts, not out of anger but anything to stop the influx of so much babble. He takes a deep steadying breath “They found you under your desk, and as much as I want to stay out of your business I have to intervene if you are going to be reckless enough to endanger yourself or the rest of the Shatterdome.” He says evenly. He does not say it to be mean, but to push the man he knows,_ knows, _can do great and terrifying things when he set’s his mind to it. And he will push this man into being better, because they don’t have time for any breakdowns or replacements. The world is going to end and they are the only ones left that can even try to fix it._

_“I, y-yeah, I get it… alright.” Newton stutters out after a beat of silence._

_“Alright?”_

_“Alright, I’ll start carrying my medication around with me.” He says stubbornly. Hermann figures that’s as good as it’s going to get._


End file.
